Notorious spammer Robert Soloway will get his day in court next month when his criminal trial kicks off in Seattle.
Soloway was arrested in May and charged with sending out tens of millions of unsolicited messages; so many, in fact, that
investigators called him the "Spam King," and his arrest was hailed as a major blow in the fight against spam. Many of Soloway's unsolicited messages were sent out
using hacked "zombie" computers infected with botnet software, prosecutors allege (Compare antispam products).
Read the latest WhitePaper - Proving Control of the Infrastructure
The United States Attorney's Office is seeking more than $770,000 in fines, but Soloway is also facing fraud and identity
theft charges that could result in jail time.
If U.S. attorneys can get money out of Robert Soloway, it will be a first. In 2005 Microsoft was awarded a $7.8 million judgement
against the Spam King, but it has yet to collect a penny, according to Aaron Kornblum, a senior attorney with Microsoft.
In a May 2005 discussion group post, Soloway correctly predicted that Microsoft would be unable to collect. "I've been sued for hundreds of millions of dollars and have had my business running
for over 10 years without ever paying a dime regardless to the outcome of any lawsuits," he wrote.
With Soloway now facing criminal charges under the 2003 CAN-SPAM (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act) law, however, his case may serve as a deterrent
to other spammers, Kornblum said. "There have not been a large number of criminal CAN-SPAM prosecutions in the U.S.," he said.
"This is significant."
To date, Microsoft has filed 131 lawsuits against spammers in the U.S. Most of them have ended up in a settlement or a judgement against the
spammer, Kornblum said. Of those cases, 52 remain open or have been dismissed.
"We have helped change the economics of spam and we've done that across multiple fronts," he said. "Spammers now sit in jail."
Soloway isn't the only accused spammer going to trial in Seattle next month. Also coming up in March is a civil case against
Impulse Media Group, which is charged by the U.S. Department of Justice with spamming computer users with pornographic e-mails.
The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.
